


But it works.

by dragonofeternal



Category: Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic
Genre: Fix-It, Flash Fic, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-14
Updated: 2015-09-14
Packaged: 2018-04-20 19:41:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4799864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonofeternal/pseuds/dragonofeternal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Judal returns. Hakuryuu goes on. Kouen lives. Fix-it fic musings on the thematic aftermath of Night 281.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But it works.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SetsuntaMew](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SetsuntaMew/gifts).



> This is my attempt to reconcile my personal interpretations of the themes I thought Magi was trying to present with the kind of hand-wavy, condescending answers of the last couple chapters. I hope it can serve as a comfort to anyone else who found 280 and 281 painful for how they treated Hakuryuu and the concept of depravity.

Judal returns to Hakuryuu, who is now white, and the fucking racket of white ruhk hardly even bothers him through the shock of betrayal he feels. And yet when Hakuryuu sees him, he RUNS into his arms, hugs him so tight that Judal has all the air knocked out of him. And it FEELS like Hakuryuu, feels like his pain and his acceptance. And so Judal lets himself soften in Hakuryuu’s arms, hug him back twice as tightly

He demands to know what happened to Hakuryuu’s limbs, and Hakuryuu replies that Kouen took them.

xxx

(If Kouen were there, he would explain that he was trying to help Hakuryuu carry the pain of the past. Because it can’t ever really be erased you know, the pain that people feel, but having someone to help you carry it makes it lighter.)

(Kouen lives a life in blessedly quiet exile and spends it writing history book. He and Hakuryuu exchange letters, about Hakuyuu and Hakuren, and for the first time almost feel like a family through their shared pain.)

xxx

At first, Judal doesn’t know how to cope, because Hakuryuu is and isn’t the same. But Hakuryuu doesn’t expect some miraculous turn around. He doesn’t expect some perfect, pure-white magi. He just wants Judal, for all his imperfections and pains and laughter.

In return, as Judal trails after like a second shadow, he finds that Hakuryuu isn’t so different as the thought. He survives for Kou, not necessarily for any ideal or for some pure saccharine idea that the pain they bore can be forgiven.

It’s relieving.

xxx

Hakuryuu still gets phantom twinges in his left arm: pains from an injury long since "healed." He massages it and swears at it, but it doesn't stop the pain or the itching. This hand, through Phenex's magic, is his, and yet some nights it feels completely alien.

He stares at it in the gloom, and remembers.

He remembers the feel of pulling a muscle during practice, dull yet stinging and lasting for days. He remembers the agony of Isaac's sword plunging into his forearm and the sting of the snake bite that lead to loss of the entire arm. He'll never forget the daily stings of growing his prosthetic into the stump, the fire as nerve endings came alive with new organic tissues. 

Now though, it's just an itch that won't be satisfied no matter how much he scratches it. Hakuryuu swears at it again, as though that will change things.

xxx

Some of the pain fades with time. Judal BEGRUDGINGLY supposes that outright nihilistic destruction of all that exists isn’t the best answer. After all, Hakuryuu is part of all that exists, and he couldn’t bear to destroy him. Since he was never one for holding still and allowing his thoughts to catch up to him, Judal helps Hakuryuu, and Kou, and maybe on occasion that obnoxious mini magi. He likes the missions like the old days, where he gets to blow things up, but the other kind aren’t half-bad either.

The pain does fade. Some of the darkness turns back to shining, headache inducing white. But for the most part, Judal finds, he remains the same. He will always hate, and he will always know loss, and it will always be a black, snarling thing in his belly that reminds him of what he can never be. New joy doesn’t erase old hurt, but it doesn’t worsen it either.   
Life, as it seems, works, and Judal works along with it, at Hakuryuu’s side, and that is enough that he can be… at least a little bit content.


End file.
